During the latter portion of the mother-superior's story—the portion that related to the delegalized elder son of the Duke of Hereward—a light had dawned upon the mind of Salome, but so slowly that no sudden shock of joy had been felt, no wild exclamation of astonishment uttered: yet that light had revealed to the amazed and overjoyed young wife, beyond all possibility of further doubt, the blessed truth of the perfect freedom of her worshiped husband from all participation in the awful crimes of which over-whelming circumstantial evidence had convicted him in her own mind, but of which it was now certain that his miserable brother, his "double" in appearance, was alone guilty.
The dark story had been told in the darkness of the abbess' den, so that not even the varying color that must otherwise have betrayed the deep emotion of the hearer, could be seen by the speaker.
At the conclusion of the story, one irrepressible reproach escaped the lips of the young wife.
"Oh, mother! mother! If you knew all this, why did you not tell me before? For you must also have known, what is now so clear to me, that not the Duke of Hereward, who, after all, is my husband, I thank Heaven—not the noble Duke of Hereward, but his most ignoble brother, his counterpart in person and in name, has married that terrible Scotch woman, and mixed himself up in murder and robbery. Oh, mother! you should have told me before!"
"My daughter be patient! Only this week have I been able to fit in all the links in the chain of evidence to make the story complete. Your mention of the Duke of Hereward as your false husband, my memory of the Duke of Hereward as the wronged husband who had slain my betrothed in a duel, all set me to thinking deeply, very deeply thinking. I did not express my thoughts unnecessarily. Silence is, with our order, a duty—the handmaid of devotion; but I set secret inquiries on foot, through agencies that our orders possess for finding out facts, and means that we can use, superior to those of the most accomplished detectives living. Through such agencies, and by such means, I learned not only external facts—which are often lies, paradoxical as that may seem—but I learned, also, the internal truths without which no history can be really known, no subject really understood."
"But oh! you should not have kept silence. You should not have left me to misjudge my noble husband a day longer than necessary!" burst forth Salome.
"Calm yourself, daughter, and listen to me. I have kept nothing from you a day longer than necessary. The facts that exonerate the Duke of Hereward came to me last of all. Hear me. From Father Garbennetti, the new cure of San Vito, I learned the truth of that miscalled elopement of the late Duchess of Hereward. I learned that—in the words of your own charming poet—
'My rival fair
A saint in heaven should be.'
For a most innocent and most deeply wronged and long-suffering martyr on earth she had been. From him I also learned the existence of her boy, and the adoption of the boy, after the mother's death, by the Duke of Hereward. That was all I could learn from the Italian priest, who had lost sight of the lad after the mother's death. Next I pushed inquiries through our agents in England, and through the investigations of Father Fairfield, the eloquent English oratorian, I learned the truth of John Scott's life in England and Scotland, as I have given it to you. I received Father Fairfield's letter only this day; only this day I have learned, Salome, that you are really the Duchess of Hereward; that the Duke of Hereward was, and is, really your husband, and was never the husband of any other woman."
"Oh, how bitterly! how bitterly! how unpardonably I have wronged him! He will pardon me! Yes, he will! for he is all magnanimity, and he loves me! But I can never, never pardon myself!" exclaimed the young wife, her first joy at discovering the absolute integrity of her husband now giving place to the severest self-condemnation.